The author of the book "Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and America's War on Terror," published in 2006 by Random House, has been monitoring the role physicians and psychologists have played in government-sponsored interrogations, observing that they were often there to serve the interrogators rather than the subjects.

In the process, he came across a curious fact. About three years ago, he says, the "entire prisoner death reporting system was turned off in Afghanistan." And in Iraq, it was "turned off" at the beginning of 2008.